Sustained Investigation #12

In my art, you can clearly see a more peaceful river flowing between the forest's hills and trees. The story told is this is a steady stream that gives this forest a more gentle peaceful look to it. There are even little butterflies by the flowers in this gentle little place. I chose to make this because I noticed that layering the paper brings my art to life. So I decided to use more colors and paper layered up to give off the detailed peaceful area. This relates to my life because I love nature and love to just sit and observe the peaceful parts of the environment. In this place, it's the perfect spot where you could sit and relax and take in the beauty that surrounds you. I personally love the curves of rivers and this time I made sure the river was the center of this piece.

My work was made by, as always, creating a sketch of where I wanted my trees, river, and hills to be placed. I then took a very thin piece of paper and ripped it into smaller different sized pieces with my hands. I then matched the pieces to the treetops and hills almost like puzzle pieces. If they matched the curves and lines of my sketches I would glue them down with a glue stick. Once I finished the thicker paper layers I glued paper towels to the treetops to give it more detail and texture like a tree. Once I finished using the paper materials, which I used because those are made from trees, I started to paint. I used watercolor pens for the hills and foggy background trees. I used acrylic paint for the thicker or stubborn treetops because it's harder for it to become pigmented with just the watercolor pens. I used different shades of green for the treetops and hills. I also used different shades of brown to show the depth from the darker trees in the front to the lighter trees in the back. I used a mixture of blue watercolor pens and blue and white acrylic paint for the river. I went in with orange, yellow, and pink watercolor pens to create the flowers. Lastly, I went in and darkened all of the colors I felt could be darker and added highlights where I felt like certain spots could be lighter. I added white highlights to the foggy in the background and to the water. I also added a touch of sparkly paint to make the river and flowers look shiny.

The process of creating my art involved a lot of layering of the ripped paper to get the texture correct. I layered enough paper so when I went over it with color it was obvious it had texture. It also involved lots of darkening and lightening of colors to make this art more detailed. My project evolved mostly when I revised the colors. Once I darkened the shadow under the trees in the front and lightened the grass in the trees in the back it looked beautiful. My next step could be to work on fixing up my border. This time I didn't plan enough room on my paper where I could paint my border sparkly, as usual. So next time I want to paint on a larger piece of paper and measure out a clean-cut border. I also want to not only layer the paper but also used bark or moss to add even more detail to my nature pieces.